They might have taken the Ahuaty Parana, a sort of natural canal,
which goes off a little below the mouth of the Tunantins, and
re-enters the principal stream a hundred an twenty miles further on
by the Rio Japura; but if the larger portion of this measures a
hundred and fifty feet across, the narrowest is only sixty feet, and
the raft would there have met with a difficulty.
On the 13th of July, after having touched at the island of Capuro,
passed the mouth of the Jutahy, which, coming from the
east-southeast, brings in its black waters by a mouth five hundred
feet wide, and admired the legions of monkeys, sulphur-white in
color, with cinnabar-red faces, who are insatiable lovers of the nuts
produced by the palm-trees from which the river derives its name, the
travelers arrived on the 18th of July before the little village of
Fonteboa.
At this place the jangada halted for twelve hours, so as to give a
rest to the crew.
Fonteboa, like most of the mission villages of the Amazon, has not
escaped the capricious fate which, during a lengthened period, moves
them about from one place to the other.
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